9_d_.: rollers, 13_s_.2_d_., or equal to that amount.] [Footnote 3: Even at the present time, when business is so much depressed, the mill-rollers make an average wage of L5 10_s_.

a week.] These earnings are far above the average incomes of the professional classes.

The rail rollers are able to earn a rate of pay equal to that of Lieutenant-Colonels in Her Majesty's Foot Guards; plate-rollers equal to that of Majors of Foot; and roughers equal to that of Lieutenants and Adjutants.
Goldsmith spoke of the country curate as "passing rich with forty pounds a year." The incomes of curates have certainly increased since the time when Goldsmith wrote, but nothing like the incomes of skilled and unskilled workmen.

If curates merely worked for money, they would certainly change their vocation, and become colliers and iron-workers.
When the author visited Renfrewshire a few years ago, the colliers were earning from ten to fourteen shillings a day.

According to the common saying, they were "making money like a minting machine." To take an instance, a father and three sons were earning sixty pounds a month,--or equal to a united income of more than seven hundred pounds a year.